The present invention relates to a method and device for gathering items of information for their subsequent processing in very diverse fields for aiding in decision making, such as market research, commercial policy in firms, communication, etc...
At the present time, the required items of information may be gathered by means of questionnaires distributed among a group of persons constituting a sample of the population to be studied. These questionnaires consist of a certain number of "questions" or "propositions" in respect of which each person of the sample must assign a note or mark, for example from 1 to 4 or from 1 to 5, or an appreciation of the type "a little", "a lot", "never", "always", etc...
As a variant, the questions are put to the questioned person by an inquirer.
In both cases, this manner of gathering information is not satisfactory, since the propositions are presented in an isolated manner, with no relation therebetween so that the mark given by the questioned person to each of these propositions does not take into account the contents of the other propositions. The order of importance which will thereafter be established between the various propositions could not be significant since it will be the result of a means of notes or marks given to isolated propositions.
Furthermore, when the questionnaire is presented by an inquirer the questioned person cannot disregard in his replies the relation created with the person questioning him. In other words, the presence of the inquirer disturbs in a marked manner the questioned person and may consequently bring about a shifting of emphasis or opinions in his replies.
If the gathering of the items of information is in this way disturbed, the order of importance which is thereafter established between the various propositions formulated for the attention of the questioned persons is of course also rendered false and the interpretation of the results is necessarily altered.
In an effort to attenuate this defect, one is led to increase the size of the sample, which burdens the procedures and increases the cost thereof.